War Dogs are primarily an anti-melee unit. Although they are as fragile as a peasasnt levyman with the same attack as them (and can easily destroy the same) War Dogs have a high-speed attack, and are effective against slow-moving unarmoured units. War Dogs can't damage buildings or ships, although they can take out siege weapons (but not War Wagons or Battering Rams), and are available only to most factions in the Castle Age. War Dogs are capable of spotting hidden units, but their poor line of sight means that they are better off as an offensive unit.

Because of the speed at which they train, you now have a weapon that can be used to disrupt pike-and-shot formations, although you need to train a lot of them just to make them effective, because they can be easily killed. Still, War Dogs are fairly cheap and easy to replace, given their fast training speed. If you however are the one facing War Dogs, your best bet is to train levy units to absorb and distract the dogs — who can then be turned upon by your more powerful units, especially sword infantry and heavy cavalry. Entrenching units also helps to protect your troops from being mauled to death if you suddenly find that your opponent has a large pack of dogs waiting for you. Equally, they are very subceptible to firearms until they can get a lock on their users, which is something you may need to consider if you want to use them against cannon or arquebusiers.

Because of different cultural and geographic environments, not all factions can raise War Dogs. Some, like the Welsh, can train the larger and more dangerous Gafaelgwn which can even be used to take down heavy cavalry if they can catch up with them. Other factions instead do not train War Dogs, but may rely on the costlier Royal Hounds which while being weaker, have better line of sight and speed.

Humanity has demonstrated a knack for using any and all resources available to wage total war whenever so needed, and has used all sorts of animals, including horses, elephants, camels, and dogs ... as well as more eccentric choices such as pigs, dolphins and even bats and hornets. Although we often think of the Middle Ages as being one dominated by the knightly horse-borne warrior, for many of the more impoverished cultures of the world, dogs sometimes could provide a solution. Being fast, agile and intimidating due to their appearance and behaviour, dogs could be trained to maim, rend and kill — a fact which was not lost on many people, such as the Welsh and the Spanish. Not everyone used war dogs, however, and there were cultural as well as logistical reasons for eschewing their use.